The Mauritanian (Guantánamo Diary)

Content Warning: This section references torture, graphic violence, sexual assault, racism, and Islamophobia.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp had a list of 15 high-priority detainees; Slahi was number one, followed by Mohammed al Qahtani. The author was told that he met all the criteria: “You’re Arab, you’re young, you went to Jihad, you speak foreign languages, you’ve been to many countries, you’re a graduate in a technical discipline” (192). Agent Robert, who previously traveled to Canada and Europe to investigate Slahi, gave him a forged letter from his brother to get him to cooperate: “[T]he forgery was so clumsy and unprofessional that no fool would fall for it” (195). Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent Christian also interrogated Slahi “about some bad people” (204).

Slahi repeatedly asked what incriminating evidence the US government had. Agent Robert showed Slahi a CNN report from March 2002 claiming that he “was the coordinator who facilitated the communication between the September 11 hijackers through the guestbook of [his] homepage” (196). However, these allegations weren’t part of any summaries of evidence at Guantanamo, as he later learned. Other agents, like Michael, were “used to humbled detainees who probably had to cooperate due to torture” (197).